


The Whirling Ways Of Stars That Pass

by metalocalarp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Homesickness, Light Angst, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7726021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalocalarp/pseuds/metalocalarp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We aren’t exactly following the same line of vision, Lance.”</p><p>At that, Lance shifted his position, moving so that he sat closer to Keith. Their shoulders brushed as he extended his arm upwards again. “There,” he spoke in an almost-whisper, tracing the outline of the imaginary constellation like a child following a dot-to-dot illustration. Keith watched his movements from his peripheral vision, hoping that Lance was too preoccupied to notice the rapid beating of his heart. “Can you see it now?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whirling Ways Of Stars That Pass

**Author's Note:**

> for klance week day 7: flowers/stars
> 
> okAy i wrote a good portion of this fic at like 3 am so i'm going to blame the poetic metaphors and alliteration on my sleep-deprived mind ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It was rare for the team to stick around after missions.

With the threat of the Galra around every corner, it was always much safer to depart almost immediately after repairs were made. Unfortunately, their last excursion had left them more battered and bruised than usual, and they found themselves on the surface of a planet Shiro wished they had been able to leave long ago. Lance saw no reason to complain, however; the landscape of the planet they were stationed on was reminiscent of Arus and it even brought back some of his fonder memories of Earth.

Perhaps, he thought, maybe too fond.

Night found him outside, slipping into a staring contest with the stars. For as long as he could remember, Lance had been infatuated with them. He’d plastered glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling at age five, and argued with his brother on whether or not they should come down at age twelve. They were still there when he had left for the Garrison.

“What are you doing out here?” A voice pulled Lance’s eyes away from the unfamiliar patterns. He turned to see Keith. His arms were crossed, his side pressed to the castle wall and his weight balanced on one foot.

Lance turned away quickly, drawing his knees up into chest. “I could ask you the same thing,” he responded, his usual light banter absent from his tone. “Aren’t you usually off training or something?”

“I came looking for you.” Lance glanced back up in time to see the other paladin shrug before pushing off the wall and moving forward. Keith hesitated before he sat down beside Lance, crossing his legs and gazing at his hands. Silence enveloped the two of them for a moment, empty but not quite awkward, before Keith spoke again, softer this time. “You didn’t answer my question.”

For once, Lance didn’t know how to respond. What exactly could he say? That he was missing something as simple as the shapes of the stars? That no matter how hard he tried, the faces of his family were all he could see among these new constellations? Lance exhaled softly through his nose. _He just wanted to go home..._

“Coran once showed me how far away Earth was,” he whispered slowly. Keith peered at him from out of the corner of his eye. Lance’s expression was still, his eyes glassy as they remained trailed on the sky. “When we were still on Arus, I mean.” He paused, drawing in a shaky breath. “It’s just...we’re _so far away._ ”

Lance pressed his hand to his forehead and ran it through his hair, closing his eyes. A sound bubbled up from his throat, something meant to be passed off as a laugh but resembling more of a sob. “I know it sounds stupid, but, I guess I thought that coming to see the stars would...help. That it would make me feel closer, that I would be content just knowing my family could see them too.” Lance turned towards Keith, his mouth wobbling as he tried to smile. “But I can’t see them, and neither can they. We’re nowhere near Earth, Keith. We’re so far away from home.”

Keith clasped his palms and twisted his fingers together. He didn’t feel what Lance did nearly as much; the only thing awaiting him back on Earth was the familiar warmth of the desert. But Lance--Lance had a family, and a large one at that, if the images from his memories that projected themselves during Coran’s “bonding exercises” were anything to go off of. Lance had people who cared about him, people who must have been spending all of their waking hours looking for him, wondering where the hell he went and whether or not he would ever return. Keith felt his heart ache at the thought.

“I...get what you’re saying, kinda,” Keith spoke slowly, testing the weight of the words in his mouth before speaking them, “about the stars, I mean. They kind of...keep me grounded. Even after I got booted from the Garrison, I would...watch them, wondering if they could just...tell me what went wrong out there, I guess. I’d joined the Garrison in hopes of someday getting closer to the stars, but I ended up feeling closer to them just by...making them into something new.” Keith stopped talking only after he realized just how much he said, and hoped that the darkness was enough to cover the red tint creeping across his face.

Lance gazed at Keith for a moment. Then he laughed. He leaned back, supporting the weight of his upper body with his wrists. His head tilted backwards in a genuine expression of happiness, eyes crinkling near the corners as they fluttered shut again. Keith’s breath caught in his throat as he felt his heart skip a beat.

“Man, that’s the last kind of thing I’d expect you to say,” Lance said, bringing his knuckles to his lips in an attempt to muffle his continuous giggles. He peered out at Keith through his lashes.

“Come on, you know I’m not good at this whole comfort thing.” Keith fought a smile of his own, running a hand through his hair as he met Lance’s eyes. They were strangely pretty in the starlight, shimmering in a way that reminded Keith of the way light danced across the surface of water. He paused, his light tone falling away again one he spoke. “But, I mean...it made sense at the time.”

“What, finding pictures in the stars as if they were clouds?” Lance questioned. He didn’t sound condescending, just curious.

Keith nodded, not looking away. “Try it.”

“Honestly?” Lance turned from Keith to gaze at the stars again. Another moment of silence passed, and Keith held his breath. “Those bright ones remind me of Rover.”

Keith tilted his head to the side, trying to follow Lance’s ambiguous finger-pointing and map out the shape of Pidge’s old robotic companion. “Really? I don’t see it.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Lance was incredulous. Keith shrugged, casting his gaze downwards in response. “What do you mean you don’t see it?!”

“We aren’t exactly following the same line of vision, Lance.”

At that, Lance shifted his position, moving so that he sat closer to Keith. Their shoulders brushed as he extended his arm upwards again. “There,” he spoke in an almost-whisper, tracing the outline of the imaginary constellation like a child following a dot-to-dot illustration. Keith watched his movements from his peripheral vision, hoping that Lance was too preoccupied to notice the rapid beating of his heart. “Can you see it now?”

Keith swallowed quickly and nodded, drawing in a slow breath as he felt Lance’s words ghost across his ear. “And these,” Lance continued, “it’s kinda funny, actually, but they remind me of the paint sets that my sisters would buy all the time. Somehow, the colors always ended up on the ceiling.” Lance laughed fondly at the memory, and it sounded like stardust.

“How in the world did that happen?” Keith asked, glancing away from the sky and tilting his chin slightly to peer at Lance. His let his gaze linger as he watched the corner of Lance’s lips turn up in a slight grin.

“Believe it or not, my little brothers are pretty tall,” he said, his eyes still locked onto the cosmic patterns. He had dropped his hand and was now leaning back again. “The ceilings in the bedrooms are pretty low, too. Once they get onto the beds, there’s no stopping them.” Lance settled into silence again, lost in thought.

Again, Keith felt his heart ache, this time with longing. He never had that kind of bond, that warm, close-knit relationship that comes with growing up with a family, and up until this point, he never knew just how much he had desired it.

After a moment, Lance sat up and looked at Keith. His face was shining and damp with tears Keith hadn’t been aware he’d been crying. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For talking with me, I mean.” The words were softly spoken, not laced with Lance’s boisterous tone or saturated with a sarcastic smirk. They were genuine, vulnerable, opening the door to a part of Lance that he rarely shared. Keith wanted to melt away into the soil.

“N-no problem,” he stumbled over his syllables, mentally kicking himself in the face. God, why did Lance make him feel like this, make him so willing to break down the walls he had boxed himself in? Sure, things hadn’t been easy when they had started out, but as time went on, Keith considered Lance and him to be partners. Maybe even friends.

Lance confused him to no end, but Keith couldn’t say he complained.

He let another moment of silence settle between the two of them, Lance studying the stars as Keith let his gaze linger on the side of Lance’s face. They had been so close only minutes ago, and Keith couldn’t decipher between the parts of him that wanted to inch even closer and the parts of him that wanted to get up, run back into the castle, and pretend nothing had ever happened between the two of them. Perhaps they were the same parts.

“What about you?” The question startled Keith, who was suddenly very aware of Lance’s eyes on him.

“What do you mean?”

“The stars,” Lance said, not breaking eye contact. “What do you see in them?”

Keith inhaled slowly, his eyes darting from Lance’s to pick apart the constellations above him. The stars strung themselves together quite simply; he saw the shapes of the training gladiators and the crystal in the control room and the strange concoctions Hunk and Coran would create out of the food goo, but he didn’t speak about any of them.

“I see the carvings, from the caves where we found the Blue Lion.” He didn’t hesitate with his words this time around. He lifted his own hand, absentmindedly leaning closer to Lance in order to trace the outlines of his own imagination.

Lance followed the invisible lines with his gaze. “I see them, too,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off the stars even as Keith dropped his hand, even as Keith turned his body so that he sat perpendicular to Lance. Even as Keith, against his better judgement and the mess of feelings and emotions in his head, brought his fingers tentatively up to Lance’s jaw and pulled his gaze from the sky. Keith hesitated, his heart pounding in his ears before he tilted his head and leaned forward to close the distance between their lips.

Alarms immediately began blaring through Keith’s skull and he froze up. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, and yet it was, and Keith felt himself be torn apart because what was he doing? Why was he doing this? Why did he _enjoy_ doing this? Panic settled in his chest and pulled away, his eyes flying open suddenly.

He was met with Lance’s breathless stare. “I…I didn’t...” Keith adverted his gaze, subconsciously covering his mouth with his hand. He didn’t know what to say, though he found it impossible to meet Lance’s eyes. _God, why did I do that?_

“Keith.” He flinched at his name, despite Lance’s gentle tone. He felt Lance’s fingers curl around his wrist and pull his hand from his face. Keith reluctantly met his gaze and caught his breath. Lance’s eyes seemed to hold entire galaxies within them, like snow globes of cosmic dust. He blinked slowly, and the stars scattered like ripples across water.

“Lance, I’m...I didn’t--” Keith was cut off abruptly as Lance brought their lips together again, their noses bumping awkwardly and teeth clacking together roughly. His eyes widened at the sudden movement and he watched Lance’s eyes flutter shut slowly, his hand still gripping Keith’s wrist loosely. Only after Lance moved his hand behind Keith’s head to deepen the kiss did Keith let his eyelids slip shut.

Keith didn’t understand it, couldn’t comprehend why Lance of all people made him feel this way. Why was it Lance who he couldn’t stop thinking about? Why was it Lance who had brought out both the best and worst parts of him, who had been a driving force in shaping his ability to trust in others?

Why was it _Lance_ who drove him completely crazy, yet kept him sane?

Lance’s lips parted slightly, capturing Keith’s bottom lip between them. He had long since let go of Keith’s wrist and had one hand tangled in his hair, the other cupping the side of his face. Keith’s fingers brushed across Lance’s jawbone gently, hesitantly, a silent question at his fingertips waiting to be answered. Lance murmured incoherently against Keith’s lips, sending chills up his spine.

He pulled away from Lance only to catch his breath, his eyelids opening slowly after a moment passed and the realization had fully sunk in. He placed a hesitant hand on Lance’s neck, drawing the other closer to him. Lance rested his forehead on Keith’s as he laughed, rosy cheeks illuminated under the faint light of the moon. This time, it was Keith who whispered _thank you._

Silence fell across them again. Keith’s thoughts ran wild, scrambled and thrown together in a way that made his head ache (or maybe it was just the effects of their kiss). He still couldn’t understand his feelings about Lance, let alone begin to comprehend how Lance himself felt. Did Lance return those feelings, _his_ muddled, complicated, drunk-off-the-starlight feelings? Keith didn’t know, and now wasn’t the time to ask.

For now, they would sit together in silence, as the stars wrote their whispered words in Morse code.

**Author's Note:**

> come scream about voltron with me on tumblr: klance-klance-revolution


End file.
